Thursday, January 21, 2010

Do you know...

...what a Groom's Cake is? Did you know that it is primarily considered a Southern tradition? I did not and it wasn't until I read a thread over at the forum that I realized it. My sweet Husband is even admitting rather sheepishly that he had never heard of such a thing until...get this...our own wedding!

I seriously had no idea!

Our Groom's Cake has a little story behind it. I wanted something special for Husband and something that would be a surprise. My mom found a lady who made 3 dimensional cakes in her home. Now this was way before the Ace of Cakes and all that jazz. She showed me some of her previous designs. One of them was a computer circa mid-nineties with keyboard and everything, something like

 this!

But... it was frosted with grey icing. Too reminiscent of the bloody armadillo from Steel Magnolias. (language warning)

So, this was our Groom's Cake:



Since Husband's family moved around a lot when he was growing up, I thought it would be fun to pay tribute to those travels. This very talented lady ended up making us a chocolate cake in the shape of a map of the US. I made little flags for every place he had lived and found a baby boy figurine to sit in Illinois (where he was born) and a cute bride and groom to stand in Texas. You know, for the life of me, I can't remember what that little banner said but we still have the bride and groom figurine and pull it out occasionally on our anniversary!

If you had a Groom's Cake, I'd love to hear about it!

11 comments:

  1. Fun memories! Thanks for sharing. We were married ten years ago in Texas, and I knew what a groom's cake was just by being at all my friend's weddings around that time. I did not realize Yankees don't do them, even though I was one until high school.

    Ours was a chocolate sheet cake cut into the shape of the State of Texas with the Texas flag painted on it, sort of like this image (http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2061450module10326108photo_1215268659texas-sheet-cake.jpg). My husband and I were, and still are, huge lovers of the great state, even though we're stuck in Miami (hopefully temporarily).

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  2. My husband wanted a 3D soccer ball, but something was lost in translation and the lady just made a round cake and decorated it like a soccer ball. This year for his birthday I made him a 3D soccer ball cake (although it was only half a sphere).

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  3. We had a grooms cake and I must say that I loved it better than the wedding cake. We had a dear friend that was a cake maker by profession, so I requested a Texas Aggie Bonfire cake and boy did she deliver! It was perfect. I even made an outhouse for the top. (Aggie tradition) Most of my extended family are Aggies, so everyone got a kick out of it.

    I too thought EVERYONE had groom's cakes, but learned this was not the case when we moved out of state to SD. Poor ol' Yankees.. ;-)

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  4. What a beautiful cake. But what I think made it most special is the little touches you put on it :0)

    Sandy

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  5. I love your groom's cake! That is so cute.

    I married a Southerner and groom's cakes were new to me as well. His mother owned a gourmet food company that was famous for the Tennessee Tipsy Cake (the "tipsy" being Jack Daniels). So his was a Tennessee Tipsy Cake with Tipsy Fudge Sauce. (YUM)

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  6. I had no idea it was a Southern thing.

    We didn't do a groom's cake as we got married in MA, my husband is a Bostonian and we were on a tight budget (paying for everything ourselves.)

    Yours was super cute. I love the idea of the little flags, the baby and the bride and groom figures.

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  7. I didn't realize groom cakes were a southern tradition, either! LOL! Craig's cake was a beautiful fruit cake. It looked so delicious that it was eaten before mine even started going. No one in our family had a chance to try it. So, for our 1st anniversary my parents and in laws bought us the very same cake and we enjoyed trying it for the first time.

    I tried to find a picture but couldn't. But I did find out that traditionally a groom's cake was adorned with fruit. We didn't know that when we picked his out. It was so beautiful! Almost outshined my cake! LOL!

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  8. I didn't know that groom's cakes were Southern. I'm a Yankee, and married one as well, but had a groom's cake. Our wedding cake was vanilla, so his smaller round cake was chocolate with chocolate frosting. I had a Precious Memories figurine on top, that was a soldier. There was lettering on top that said, "You'll always be my hero", which after 17 years of marriage, I can honoestly say he still is my hero.

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  9. My hubby and I met working at a YMCA camp, so fr the grooms cake we had a beautiful chocolate cake with a tent (like the Christmas village pieces with the light inside!) with a few pine trees a campfire with a pot cooking on it, cute little squirrels and a cardinal, and a woodpile and chopping block! My Mountain Man was very surprised and loved it!

    The banner on your cake appears to say "Great _______ (people???) have great beginnings!"

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  10. Very interesting that it's a southern thing...since we aren't! We technically had a "groom's cake" at our wedding, but it was more for me. Hubby had gotten me a very cute set of cows on a tractor that said "just moo-ied", but my mom wanted me to use her cake topper on the wedding cake. So my MIL (a wonderful cake decorator) made chocolate side cakes with cow spots and used the topper, and we called it a groom's cake.

    My little brother in law got married this year, and his bride's family (mostly from California) had never heard of the concept before, and they couldn't get over how cute the cake was (his was german chocolate with a tractor with a flatbed trailer holding a hay bale cake with a little bride and groom on it.)

    Maybe rural areas are just more like the south out here...lots of southern style food and sweet tea around my in-laws, anyway!

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  11. Funny... I'm thinking of making a grooms cake in the shape of the United States as well! My fiance loves maps and has a map where he has mapped out his travels throughout his life, and I am thinking of replicating it in cake form as a surprise for his groom cake! Thanks for sharing your memories!

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts and yourself!